NYT: Gen. Dan Caine – Despite a punishing air campaign, the Iranians “still retain some capability”

Iran has severely damaged several American military bases in the Middle East, officials say, ‘The New York Times’ quotes.

Iran has bombed U.S. bases across the Middle East in retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli war, forcing many American troops to relocate to hotels and office spaces throughout the region, according to military personnel and American officials.

So now much of the land-based military is, in essence, fighting the war while working remotely.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has urged people to report these new locations as it hunts for the dispersed troops. U.S. military officials say that threat is not stopping the Pentagon from carrying out the war against Iran, which is in its fourth week.

But the relocation of troops to makeshift — one official called them “alternative” — sites raises questions about the Trump administration’s preparations for the war.

There were close to 40,000 U.S. troops in the region when the war started, and Central Command has dispersed thousands of them, some to as far away as Europe, American military officials said. But many have remained in the Middle East, although not on their original bases, military officials said.

The result, according to current and former military officials, is a war that is much harder to prosecute.

Iran responded forcefully to the joint American and Israeli strikes, targeting not only U.S. bases but also embassies and oil and gas infrastructure throughout the region. With its supreme leader and dozens of other leaders killed, the Iranian regime has retaliated by launching hundreds of drones and missiles into neighboring countries and largely shuttered the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route, making sure the war would be felt by people across the globe.

13 bases are out or work

Many of the 13 military bases in the region used by American troops are all but uninhabitable, with the ones in Kuwait, which is next door to Iran, suffering perhaps the most damage. Six U.S. service members were killed in a strike on Port Shuaiba that destroyed an Army tactical operations center. Iranian drones and missiles also targeted Ali Al Salem Air Base, damaging aircraft structures and injuring personnel, and Camp Buehring, damaging maintenance and fuel facilities.

In Qatar, Iran struck Al Udeid Air Base, the regional air headquarters of U.S. Central Command, damaging an early-warning radar system. In Bahrain, a one-way Iranian attack drone struck communications equipment at the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet. At Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, Iranian missiles and drones damaged communications equipment and several refueling tankers.

An Iranian-backed militia in Iraq launched a drone swarm attack on an upscale hotel in Erbil early in the war.

Iranian officials have even accused the U.S. military of using civilians as human shields by putting American troops in hotels.

“We are forced to identify and target the Americans,” the intelligence arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said in a message to people in the region, according to Tasnim News Agency. “Therefore, it is better not to shelter them in hotels and to stay away from their locations.”

The message added that “it is your Islamic duty to accurately report the hiding places of American terrorists and send the information to us on Telegram,” a social media app.

Despite a punishing air campaign, the Iranians “still retain some capability,” Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged in the Pentagon news conference last week.

During the war in Iraq the United States built up its bases there and in Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Now, the war in Iran has made all of those bases vulnerable — to the point where service members can’t really live or work there for extended periods, military officials said.

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